Reef Citation Index™
Hawaii's first proprietary AI-citation visibility tracker. Powered by The Reef Method.
Reef Citation Index™ measures which Hawaii businesses get cited when a real buyer asks an AI assistant for a recommendation — across Anthropic Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot. Quarterly Volumes. Open methodology. Published under Creative Commons.
▸ LATEST
Vol. 1
May 2026
Claude baseline · 50 queries · 5 verticals
▸ NEXT
Vol. 2
August 2026
Multi-engine expansion · 5 engines
▸ INSTRUMENT_05 · REEF_LAB · 2026-Q2 BASELINE
Hawaii-specific citation telemetry — proprietary capture, open methodology.
- ▸ Engines tracked
- 5
- ▸ Verticals covered
- 5
- ▸ Publication cadence
- Quarterly
- ▸ Vol. 1 query universe
- 50 queries
- ▸ Vol. 1 engine
- Claude (Sonnet)
- ▸ Methodology stages
- 4
- ▸ License
- CC BY 4.0
- ▸ First published
- May 2026
- ▸ Next Volume
- Vol. 2 · Aug 2026
Five engines. Five verticals. One Hawaii-specific instrument.
Reef Citation Index™ is the productized methodology behind every Hawaii AI-search project we publish. It captures the citation behavior of the five AI assistants Hawaii buyers actually use — and tracks which of the state's businesses they recommend, by category.
▸ ENGINES_TRACKED
Claude
Anthropic · Vol. 1 baseline
ChatGPT
OpenAI · Vol. 2+
Perplexity
Vol. 2+
Gemini
Google · Vol. 2+
Copilot
Microsoft · Vol. 2+
▸ VERTICALS_COVERED
VERT_01
Hospitality
Hotels, resorts, vacation rentals
VERT_02
Real Estate
Brokerages, agents, leasehold
VERT_03
Healthcare
Practices, clinics, specialty
VERT_04
Weddings
Venues, planners, vendors
VERT_05
Home Services
Trades, contractors, repair
▸ MEASUREMENT_PIPELINE
Query Universe
A standardized set of recommendation prompts representative of how Hawaii buyers actually ask AI assistants for help.
Engine Response Capture
Live runs against each AI assistant; full text responses captured and archived for reproducibility.
Entity Validation
Cross-reference cited businesses against verified registries — DCCA, TripAdvisor, Honolulu REALTORS, licensing boards.
Citation Counting
Tally citations per business per query per engine; build per-vertical leaderboards and category winners.
Quarterly Volumes. Dated snapshots. Compounding signal.
Reef Citation Index™ ships on a published quarterly cadence. Every Volume is a dated dataset — methodology reproducible, license open, byline attributed. The cadence is the moat: mainland agencies don't run quarterly Hawaii datasets and never will.
PUBLICATION_ARCHIVE VOL_01 → VOL_04 published
Vol. 1
may 2026
Anthropic Claude single-engine baseline. 50 queries across 5 verticals. Open methodology framework launch.
read_dataset →
upcoming
Vol. 2
august 2026
Multi-engine expansion — Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot. Hospitality vertical deep-dive.
scheduled
Vol. 3
november 2026
Healthcare and home-services deep-dive. Quarter-over-quarter delta analysis vs Vol. 2.
scheduled
Vol. 4
february 2027
One-year retrospective. Four-quarter trend analysis. Vol. 2.0 methodology revision.
Three places Reef Citation Index™ already runs.
The tracker is the engine behind the public Index, the research case study, and the Reef Method Citations layer. Every Hawaii AI-search artifact we publish runs on this measurement system.
▸ THE_DATA
Hawaii AI Search Visibility Index
The public, CC BY 4.0 dataset and open methodology framework. Volume 1 published; subsequent Volumes follow the quarterly cadence above.
Read Vol. 1 →▸ THE_PROOF
Hawaii AI Citation Analysis
Case Study #003. Reframes Vol. 1 data into the hospitality vertical deep-dive — winners by category, citation patterns, what separates the cited from the invisible.
See the analysis →▸ THE_METHOD
Reef Method · Citations Layer
Layer 3 of The Reef Method — the GEO + AEO visibility layer. Reef Citation Index™ is the measurement instrument that quantifies it.
Read the layer →Open methodology. Reproducible measurement.
Reef Citation Index™ is built on a published, CC BY 4.0-licensed methodology — not a black-box agency tool. The full query universe, engine-response protocol, entity-validation registry, and citation-counting rubric live in the open framework alongside every Volume.
Why open? Because the value isn't the methodology itself — it's the recurring application of it to Hawaii's businesses, by people who know Hawaii's businesses. Mainland agencies can read the framework. They can't run it for Hawaii on a quarterly cadence.
Every claim, leaderboard, and pattern published under Reef Citation Index™ is independently reproducible from the framework. The dataset is timestamped, the engine versions are named, the prompts are listed in full.
▸ FIELD_STUDY · ENTITY_VALIDATION
Citations cross-referenced against DCCA, TripAdvisor, Honolulu REALTORS, DOH licensure.
Named bylines. Open license.
Reef Citation Index™ is a published research instrument with attributed authorship and a permissive reuse license. No anonymous research, no agency-collective bylines, no "data sourced from undisclosed methodology."
▸ LEAD_RESEARCHER
Rodrigo Diniz
Founder & Head of Search Strategy
Author of the open methodology framework. 15+ years in digital marketing; lead architect of The Reef Method.
▸ OPERATIONS_LEAD
Taylor Asao
Head of Business Development & Operations
Operational lead on Volume cycles — query collection, response capture protocol, registry cross-validation.
Reef Citation Index™ — Frequently Asked Questions
Short, citation-friendly answers to the questions researchers, journalists, and Hawaii businesses ask about how the Index works, what it covers, and how to apply the methodology.
What is Reef Citation Index™?
Reef Citation Index™ is Nekko Digital's proprietary AI-citation visibility tracker for Hawaii businesses. It measures which Hawaii businesses are cited by Anthropic Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot when buyers ask AI assistants for recommendations. Volumes ship on a quarterly cadence under Creative Commons BY 4.0.
How often does Reef Citation Index publish?
Quarterly. Volume 1 published May 2026 as the Anthropic Claude single-engine baseline. Volume 2 ships August 2026 with multi-engine expansion. Volume 3 ships November 2026 with healthcare and home-services deep-dive. Volume 4 ships February 2027 with a year-one retrospective.
Which AI engines does Reef Citation Index track?
Five engines: Anthropic Claude (Volume 1 baseline), OpenAI ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot. Multi-engine coverage begins in Volume 2 (August 2026).
Which Hawaii business verticals does Reef Citation Index cover?
Five verticals: hospitality (hotels, resorts, vacation rentals), real estate (brokerages, agents, leasehold), healthcare (practices, clinics, specialty), weddings (venues, planners, vendors), and home services (trades, contractors, repair).
What is the methodology behind Reef Citation Index?
Four stages. (1) Query Universe: a standardized set of recommendation prompts representative of how Hawaii buyers ask AI assistants for help. (2) Engine Response Capture: live runs against each AI assistant with full text responses archived for reproducibility. (3) Entity Validation: cited businesses cross-referenced against verified registries — Hawaii Business Express / DCCA, TripAdvisor verified properties, Honolulu Board of REALTORS, and DOH licensure. (4) Citation Counting: tallied per business per query per engine to build per-vertical leaderboards. The full methodology is published under Creative Commons BY 4.0.
Where is the Volume 1 dataset published?
Volume 1 is published at /resources/hawaii-ai-search-visibility-index/. The page includes the full 50-query universe, scoring rubric, results, limitations section, and methodology framework — and carries the canonical Dataset schema.
What is the Reef Citation Index license?
Creative Commons BY 4.0. The methodology and every published Volume's dataset are freely reusable with attribution. Researchers, journalists, and other agencies can apply the framework to produce their own datasets. The trademark Reef Citation Index™ refers specifically to Nekko Digital's quarterly published application of the framework.
Who runs Reef Citation Index?
Lead researcher and author of the open methodology framework: Rodrigo Diniz, Founder & Head of Search Strategy at Nekko Digital. Operations lead on Volume cycles (query collection, response capture protocol, registry cross-validation): Taylor Asao, Head of Business Development & Operations. Contact via /contact/.
▸ READ_IF:vertical = hawaii